For the person on the street the list matters. They steam at the growing list of public servants making six-figures, providing confirmation that municipalities, school boards, police, health care facilities and education institutions are out of touch with the real world.

Bill C-51’s powers are more terrifying than any fictional novel. It would transform CSIS’s role from “watching” to using “disruptive powers”; it will give police more powers to preventatively detain or restrict terror suspects. The attacks and killings in Ottawa, Quebec and Paris, have only fanned the flames of the myth Canada is under attack and needs protecting.

Stoney Creek tree plantings aimed to ward off emerald ash borer"Lets be real though you cannot replace a tree. A tree lost is forever lost, the best you can do is plant others to mitigate the loss and perhaps someday come close to what once was years into the future. I say this because there is an epidemic in thi"

Comment by Hamiltonian

Friday, November, 14, 2014 - 7:07:37 PM

Column: Getting to know my great-grandfather"I very much enjoyed reading your column on your great-grandfather who died in the Great War. I often think of my grandmother's uncle, Ivan Newell Wallis, of Greensville who died in the Great War in Aug 1918 at the age of 20 years. I know a few things"

Comment by nswatters@yahoo.ca

Friday, November, 14, 2014 - 6:06:53 PM

Chris Charlton hopeful about Remembrance Day bill "Unnecessary and a waste of time. What we need to put our efforts in is for actual services and aid for our veterans not an empty holiday so politicians can pretend for a day they care and to pump up patriotism so they can squeak harmful unpopular leg"

There were cries from the chattering classes that Ferguson didn’t get his comeuppance for what he did. Soon after, under pressure from Merulla and his proposed motion that would have further continued the make-believe crisis, Ferguson held an impromptu news conference to detail his self-imposed penalties, including donating $1,000 to the Ancaster Community Services. However, quickly after, it was discovered that the OPP had been asked by Hamilton police to conduct an investigation into an “historic” assault at city hall. The OPP have refused to identify what the investigation was about.

The last time Ontario revamped its sex-ed education curriculum in the 1990s, the Internet was barely a blip on a screen, cell phones were as large as shoe boxes and social media was more science fiction than reality.

Emergency response times have jumped to 11:42 minutes for the entire amalgamated city within a year, but response times are worse for Dundas residents, who have to wait a whopping 12:30 minutes, up from 9:30 minutes a year ago. Glanbrook residents now wait 13 minutes, down from 14:54 minutes, while for Flamborough homeowners anxiously listening for that siren, it’s now 18:35 minutes rather than 18:47 minutes.

It shouldn’t come as a major surprise to Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board officials that taxpayers have raised a skeptical eye to them holding a two-day professional development conference for their principals at the Niagara Falls Hilton. While the information and networking aspects of the event may prove beneficial to educators, it leaves a lingering bad taste in residents’ mouths as their taxes continue to rise and go towards educators, or for that matter politicians or bureaucrats, to hold conferences to improve their productivity.

Suburban politicians vote on transit even though their constituents have no vested interest in the service, and to pay for transit, riders, predominately downtown residents, pay twice, through fares and property taxes. However, many suburban residents question why they should pay for a service they don’t receive.

Last week the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority surprised the city with a $1.2-million bill for 2015, compared with the $514,000 the city had budgeted based on the 2014 amount. The authority’s recently hired chief administrative officer, Carmen D’Angelo, has decided that in order to solve the authority’s own budget woes, it must look to the city for some financial relief.

Satire, jokes and humour have been the bedrock of attacks against dictators, zealots and governments, whether it was Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the French philosopher Voltaire or American comics Lenny Bruce and Chris Rock. At its best, this sort of humour seeks to point out society’s foibles and hypocrisies in a manner that forces the audience to think critically about them. It’s a powerful tool for change and it’s that power that scares those who the satire seeks to undermine. In their fear they often choose to meet humour with violence.

A century ago today on the battlefields of Europe a Christmas miracle happened. Men who had spent most of the year trying to kill each other stopped fighting and for a span of a few hours to in rare cases several days, laid down their arms and joined together in song, sport and celebration. For a brief period in a war that would drag on for almost another three mud- and blood-soaked years, humanity was restored.